


The Trial

by LaLaCat1



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Jesse kinda needs a hero, Marie wants to be the hero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:48:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21814666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaLaCat1/pseuds/LaLaCat1
Summary: Maria went to the Jesse Pinkman trail every day. None of the jurors had the heart to throw that Pinkman kid away and hide the key. Their opinion didn't matter; Marie was the only one who got to have a say. After all, Jesse was the reason for Hank's death, so Marie got to decide whether or not she was going to be the reason for Jesse's.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48





	The Trial

There wasn’t really much of a trial in the end. It was just…no one had the heart to throw Jesse Pinkman in jail after everything that happened. Marie understood. She sat in the audience every single day the trial took place—and it happened in record time thanks to the high-class lawyer who breezed in out of nowhere with her blond hair pulled back tight in a ponytail and her suits tailored to fit her perfectly. The point was; Maria was there the whole time, and she didn’t have the heart to throw the Pinkman kid away and hide the key either.

She watched the confession tape the day Hank died. She found the camcorder and set herself up on the couch with a cup of coffee and watched the whole thing. It was Jesse from the day before, Jesse looking haggard and scared and so incredibly sad that it actually made Marie tear up a few times watching him. How old was this kid? Twenty-three? Twenty-four, maybe? He looked about ten as he sat on her couch—in the same spot she sat as she watched the recording—and cried his eyes out over people he helped hurt.

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? He really only hurt one person, and from what the recording sounded like, he did it because Walter told him he had to. Kill the weird meth cook partner or the man selling their drug would kill Walter, and Jesse, and maybe even Skyler and the kids. Walt told him that. Was it even true? Did Walt just dislike the other cook? Maybe it was a competition thing, like Walt felt challenged by the man he made Jesse kill.

And the little boy, Drew Sharp. Listening to Jesse talk about what happened to the kid almost made Marie turn the recording off. She didn’t because she had to know—she had to know—because this was the kid that Hank was pinning all their hope of catching Walt on. If this kid was a liar, they were screwed. Marie was an excellent judge of character. She could spot a liar a mile away. 

Except when the liar was Walt.

Anyway, she knew what had happened to him before Jesse, Hank, and Gabe rode off into the morning sun to catch Walter. She’d already kind of felt bad for the kid. He was a junkie, a child, easily manipulated by someone in a position of authority, and also, Walt blackmailed him into working together in the first place. 

So she went to the trial every day and sat in the front row and listened to the lawyers lay out in graphic detail everything Jesse Pinkman had ever done wrong and then counter with why he could be forgiven for those same wrongdoings. And she kind of agreed. Just a little bit at the beginning. She figured something must have happened for him to have disappeared for six months after Hank’s last phone call. She didn’t think that the kid had double-crossed Hank—the idea never even entered her head, oddly enough—so there had to be another reason why he vanished and then was found the same night Walt died.

Listening to the officer testify about that night was hard. Really hard. More than she thought it would be. It was a young officer who pulled Pinkman over, about a mile outside of the compound where they found Walt and the dead neo-Nazis. The office reminded her of Hank when he first started out, that’s why Marie remembered his name was Richard. He was a handsome man with a full head of dark hair and really bright brown eyes, and he was probably Mexican because his last name was Rodríguez. Anyway, his testimony was hard to listen to because Richard sounded like it made him want to cry a little bit just thinking about that night. The whole time he was explaining what happened, Jesse Pinkman was sitting there growing smaller and smaller in his seat until he almost disappeared because he was so curled up on himself. He was crying a little. Marie noticed right away, same as the jurors noticed.

“We got an anonymous tip about the compound and the shootout that was going down,” Richard said. “So we went out there expecting trouble, but by the time we showed up everything was already over.”

“Did you see the defendant at the scene?” the prosecution lawyer asked. Marie didn’t remember his name.

Richard Rodríguez nodded. “He was fleeing the scene in a car belonging to one of the victims.”

“Did you stop him from fleeing the scene?”

“Yes. My partner and I apprehended Mr. Pinkman. But he wasn’t trying to get away from us, he was trying to get away from the gang.”

The prosecution lawyer winced and frowned at Richard Rodríguez like he’d said something he shouldn’t. “I’ll ask you to please refrain from speculation of motive, Officer Rodríguez,” the lawyer said. “Can you describe what happened when you apprehended Jesse Pinkman?”

Richard nodded, but he had to take a deep breath before he said anything. Marie felt her heart beat a little faster. Skyler was with her this time, she didn’t normally like coming to the trial, but she was going to be called as a witness today, so she had to be there. When Richard began speaking again, she reached out and laced her fingers through Marie’s to squeeze tightly.

Marie let her.

“Mr. Pinkman stopped the car as soon as we put our lights and siren on. He stopped right in the middle of the road. My partner and I approached the vehicle from either side, weapons drawn because of the nature of the call. We weren’t sure who was in the car or what they were doing at the site. 

I approached the car first, on the driver’s side. Mr. Pinkman had his hands on the steering wheel, in plain sight and gave no indication that he was hostile. We asked him to get out of the car and after a few minutes, he listened. We read him his rights and arrested him on the spot.”

The prosecution nodded and smiled, but it didn’t reach past the dark bags under his eyes. He looked at Jesse Pinkmen’s bowed head and hunched shoulders before glancing at Kim Wexler, seated beside Jesse with a consoling hand on his elbow.

“No further questions, your honor,” he said.

As soon as he was seated again, Kim was up and in front of Richard. “You said that Jesse took a few minutes to get out of the car like you asked him too. Why did it take him a few minutes to get out of the car?”

Richard gave a big sigh of relief. His eyebrows scrunched up earnestly, and he turned his big, dark eyes to look at Jesse again before answering. “Because he was having a panic attack, ma’am.”

“Objection. Officer Rodriguez is not a medical professional and isn’t qualified to diagnose a panic attack,” the prosecution lawyer said at once. Marie kind of hated him. He just didn’t want to let Richard get his story out, and what was the point of calling him to the stands if they weren’t going to let Richard talk?

But Kim actually seemed pleased when the judge agreed with the objection. She focused back in on Richard with a gleam in her eyes that made Marie squeeze Skyler’s hand back with all her strength. 

“Please describe, in detail, what Jesse was doing that made him need a few minutes before he got out of the car.” He was always ‘Jesse’ when she spoke about him. Never a last name, never a mister. Just Jesse, like a little kid or the boy next door.

Again, Richard nodded. “He was crying very hard. And shaking badly. I could hear his teeth rattling. I thought he might pass out because he was having trouble breathing and didn’t seem to understand who was talking to him.”

“So, he was confused?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Please describe what you mean when you say he sounded confused. Who did he think you were?”

“I mean, he thought my partner and I were part of the gang. He kept begging us not to bring him back and then not to hurt someone. He repeated that over and over again. He kept saying, ‘please don’t bring me back, please don’t hurt Brock, just kill me here.’”

Beside her, Skyler made a low sound of sadness, echoed by Marie’s own sharp intake of breath. This was new to her. It wasn’t in Hank’s files, it wasn’t in the confession video, and she didn’t have a chance to speak to Jesse Pinkman at any point during the time between his arrest and now. She was learning about this just like everyone else.

The prosecution lawyer didn’t object to anything Officer Richard said. Marie had watched enough tv to know that he could have at some point, but he didn’t. Instead, he stayed quiet while Kim kept asking questions.

“Jesse asked you to kill him rather than bring him back to the compound?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who the Brock he mentioned is?”

“Brock Cantillo. He’s the son of Mr. Pinkman’s ex-girlfriend. She was murdered by members of the gang.”

Kim nodded, pressing her hands together in front of her like a quiet prayer. “So, Jesse asked you to kill him rather than hurt this little boy?”

“Yes.”

“How did Jesse look, while he was sitting in that car, crying his eyes out, hardly able to breathe, asking you not to hurt a little boy? Asking you to kill him instead of bringing him back to the compound?”

Richard hesitated for a moment. His tongue darted out to lick his lips. Jesse was shaking in his seat, bony shoulders scrunched right up to his neck. His hair was clean and cut short—not buzzed like it had been the time he was at her house—and his face was clean-shaven. He looked like a high school kid waiting for his parents outside the principal’s office. Except, his parents hadn’t come to the trial, not even once.

“It was dark, so I had my flashlight out. My partner did as well,” Richard said. “And…Ma’am, I’ve been called in for domestic abuse cases and gang violence cases before, but I have never seen anything like this. Mr. Pinkman had bruises along both his wrists and all up his arms and around his neck. His face was so swollen one eye wouldn’t open fully. His clothes were covered in blood—old and new—and he looked like he hadn’t bathed in months. I could smell him from outside the car.

“It took him a few minutes to listen and get out of the car because he was, quite honestly, terrified. Both my partner and I had to tell him half a dozen times that we were actually police officers, not members of the gang. That we weren’t going to bring him back there. When we finally got him calmed down enough to open the car door, he had a hard time moving. “He vomited. Twice. Just on the walk from the car he was in to the police cruiser. He flinched when we came near him, filched when we put the cuffs on him and flinched when the car door closed. It-it was the most difficult arrest I’ve ever made in my entire career. He was so clearly hurt. He just really didn’t want to go back to the site.

While we were driving into the station, we got the radio call about the cell.”

“What cell?” Kim asked.

“There was a concrete hole in the ground, set up with chains, in the middle of the compound, directly next to where the math lab was located. And there was a cage and dog run set up inside the meth lab itself.”

“Did you see this setup with your own eyes?”

“Yes. I was with the team that went back the next day.”

“In your opinion, as an officer of the law, what was the purpose of the concrete hole in the ground and the dog run inside the meth lab?”

“It was a cage. The neo-Nazi group was keeping someone prisoner, moving then from the pit to the meth lab and then back again.”

“Who were they imprisoning? Who was the cage for?”

Richard pointed across the courtroom at Jesse Pinkman. “It was for him. They were keeping Mr. Pinkman prisoner, for months.”

A very quiet gasp went through the jury. Jesse Pinkman hadn’t lifted his head since before Officer Richard Rodriguez took the stand. Kim gave a grim nod.

“Thank you. No further questions.”

As Richard walked past the table where Jesse sat, he cast a somber look down at those hunched shoulders and Marie knew that Richard felt bad about having arrested Jesse. Well, now everyone else felt bad that he’d arrested Jesse as well. 

When Skyler took the stand, things got tense again. No charges were being brought up against Skyler—largely because of the phone call Walt made before he ran off and vanished for six months. Marie didn’t believe half of the things he said during that call—he hadn’t threatened his children’s safety to keep her sister in line—but she believed he’d threatened Skyler herself. He warped her, twisted her up into knots until she didn’t think there was a way out, until she was afraid of Hank, of her own brother in law.

Sometimes, Marie wished that Walt was alive, just so she could be there to watch him die again.

“Jesse came to my house once, while I was there,” Skyler said. She was looking down at the courtroom floor rather than at anyone and had her shoulders hunched up just like Jesse. But she didn’t look as sad as he did, or as vulnerable. Maybe it was just Marie’s mental image of her sister, maybe she was biased that way, but Skyler would never look weak to her the way Jesse Pinkman did.

“Why was Jesse at your house?”

Skyler shrugged. “Because Walt wanted him there. He was trying to prove a point to me.”

“Who was? Jesse?”

“No,” Skyler said, looking up at last. There was something haunted in her gaze as she locked eyes with Kim. “Walter. Walter wanted to prove a point by having Jesse there.”

Kim gave a slow nod. “And what point was that?”

“That he could bring his business into our house whenever he wanted, and I couldn’t say a thing about it. He’d hurt me, or our kids, or maybe even Jesse if I did.”

“Why do you think Walter would hurt Jesse if you opposed Walter’s business in some way?”

Skyler’s eyes darted to Pinkman and then back to Kim. “Because every word out of Jesse’s mouth, he checked with Walter before saying. He kept looking at Walter to ask permission before he said anything at all. And every time he did it, Walt would look at me to make sure I noticed. To make sure I understood how he would break me too, if he thought he had to. Like he’d broken Jesse Pinkman.”

“Objection. Speculation,” the prosecution lawyer said but with reluctance.

“Your honor, Mrs. White is not speculating. She’s a material witness to the events at hand and is recounting them from her informed perspective,” Kim said, quickly.

The judge hesitated a moment before nodding. “Overruled.”

Quick as a flash, Kim was back on Skyler, drawing out more of that wide-eyed, haunted look. The jury was eating it up, Marie could tell. It was like a soap opera, and everyone wanted to know what was going to happen next. Even Officer Richard Rodríguez was watching Skyler like he was on the edge of his set (Marie knew because she kept glancing back at him).

“How did this night end?”

Skyler’s eyes darted to Marie and then back down to the floor. “I was afraid. I was going to get myself and my kids in trouble, or I was going to give Walter an excuse to hurt this stranger he’d brought into our house. So I asked Walter to be excused from dinner and locked myself up in the bathroom until they both left.”

Doctors took the stand next, one for the prosecution and one for Kim. The first one talked about his physical injuries and tried to downplay them until Kim’s cross-examination, and then the doctor was going into detail about how the neo-Nazis had pulled Jesse Pinkman’s fingernails off, how they beat him so badly he would likely have permanent brain damage, how they didn’t just stop at hitting him. The last part, the worst abuse, the sort of thing Hank used to say waited for some men in prison, made the couple seated behind Marie cry, the woman clutching onto her husband’s shoulder and trying to be quiet about her sobbing while he curled himself around her as much as possible given the uncomfortable courtroom seating.

The second doctor spoke at length and in great detail, about susceptibility and Stockholm Syndrome and how easy it would be for a man in a position of authority to take advantage of a druggy child without any guidance and a deep-seated need for approval. The doctor even hinted at Walter White’s interest in Jesse—while not sexual—had been a violation on a very deep level. He compared Jesse to a battered wife and then looked very pointedly at Skyler in the audience. What chance did a drug-addled kid have, if someone as smart and strong as Skyler missed Walter’s true colors until it was too late?

Jesse Pinkman looked like he wanted to die, but he’d looked like that since the first day of the trial.

The fifth day, the final day, they called Jessy up to the stands himself. Marie thought that was silly. She’d gone home and watched two season’s worth of Law and Order SVU after the doctors earlier in the week and it was her opinion that Jesse wasn’t competent to take the stand on his own. He was going to say something incriminating or stupid or Stockholm-y and whatever sympathy the jury had for him would dry up. Her sympathy for him would dry up.

The prosecution was hard on Jesse. Really hard on him. The lawyer asked a lot of personal questions—Why did he start working with Walter? Why did he stay? What was the nature of their relationship? He was trying to paint Jesse as a mindless idiot who was happy to follow anyone willing to give him orders. And then the lawyer brought up Jane Margolis; didn’t Jesse kill her as well?

Jesse crumpled on the stand. Literally folded in on himself and started to cry. “He let her die,” he said after a few seconds of awkward silence. The prosecution lawyer glanced back and forth, his eyes darting around the room because it was hard to look at Jesse right then. Probably it was harder for the lawyer because he was the reason Jesse was crying.

“He told me, right before Tod’s crazy uncle was going to shoot me in the head. Mr. White told me he watched her choke to death and die,” Jesse sobbed.

“Why would he do that?” the prosecution lawyer asked.

“Because I said I wanted out. I said I was going to leave.”

And if Marie hadn’t felt at least a small portion of sympathy for Jesse Pinkman before, she would have then. For the first time, she really understood Skyler’s reluctance to work with Hank when he confronted her about Walter. Jesse Pinkman was her cautionary tale. He was an example of exactly how badly Walter could hurt her, if he felt like it. Had Skyler sensed that threat or had Walt had to explain it to her after that uncomfortable dinner with Jesse Pinkman in their house?

The questions went on for what felt like hours. Jesse alternated between sobs and dead-eyed acceptance of his fate. It was clear, the more he spoke that Jesse thought they should lock him up and throw away the key. When Gale Boetticher was brought up Jesse explained just like he did in the confession tape; he killed Gale because Walter told him he had to, told him that if Gale lived Jesse and Walter and Walter’s family would all be killed. Jesse hadn’t wanted to do it because he didn’t like hurting people, but he did do it. He did it anyway.

They brought up Drew Sharp. Jesse started sobbing again as he explained what happened. The couple behind Marie started sobbing again as well, and she realized then that they must be Mr. and Mrs. Sharp.

“No one was supposed to get hurt. That was the whole point of robbing the train. Everyone was supposed to be able to walk away and be fine, but Tod killed him anyway.” 

They had to take a recess for twenty minutes after that because Jesse was too much of a mess to answer any more questions. Marie took the opportunity to slip away from Skyler and use the ladies’ room. It was directly across the hall from the men’s room and there were two armed officers standing outside the men’s room. Mrs. Sharp was in the ladies’ room when Marie came out of the stall, but she decided not to say anything.

When the recess was over, and everyone was back in their respective locations, Jesse Pinkman sworn in again, it was Kim’s turn to ask questions. She asked the same things that the prosecution did, but in a way that forced answers out of Jesse that he clearly did not want to give. He told the room how he’d really liked making meth with Walter because Walter taught him how to do it well and Jesse thought it was the only thing he was any good at. He explained how Walter had him doing things he wasn’t comfortable with from day one—like reaching out to a high ranking drug lord that wound up with Jesse in the hospital, but Walter kept the partnership with the drug lord going anyway. He explained how, at some point, it became clear to Jesse that Walter would kill him if he thought he needed to. How Walter drugged a little boy to make Jesse help him kill Guss Fring. How, on the day Hank died, Walter called a hit out on Jesse and that was why the neo-Nazi gang was there. He explained how Walter made sure the neo-Nazis found him and how Walter let the neo-Nazis take him away.

“What did they want from you?” Kim asked. She said it gently, like she already knew because she did.

Jesse’s eyes were firmly glued to his lap, his shoulders hunch. He hadn’t made eye contact with anyone since he took the stand.

“They wanted me to cook meth.”

“Why did you listen to them?”

Jesse was silent.

“Jesse, why did you listen to them? Why did you agree to cook for them?”

Quietly, so quietly Marie almost missed it, “They said they would hurt Andrea and Brock if I didn’t.”

“But you tried to escape once, didn’t you?”

Jesse nodded. It was tiny, like the rest of him. Marie could see his bones underneath the shirt he wore. Kim had posted his bail the day she blew in to represent him, so Jesse hadn’t been kept in prison for the last month, but he hadn’t been allowed to leave a secure location either. The clothes he was dressed in now make him look like a starved dog from one of those sad commercials asking you to adopt a pet or donate money.

“What happened when you tried to escape.”

“They caught me.”

“And then what?”

“Please don’t make me say it,” Jesse whispered. He reached up and pulled at his hair. His whole body shook, teeth chattering. “Please.”

Marie watched Kim hesitate. She watched as, for just a second, the lawyer’s eyes grew over bright and she had to blink rapidly a few times before she could make herself speak steadily. “I need you to tell us what happened, Jesse. It’s very important that you tell us, in your own words, what happened.”

A sob started to escape his lips and then Jesse clamped the sound down. It turned into a strangled cry trapped behind closed lips. Still shaking, still unable to make eye contact, he said,” They tied me up and hit me and put me in their car. And then they drove to Andrea’s house, and th-they shot her. Right in front of me. And then they said they would shoot Brock too, if I did anything stupid again.”

If Marie had to guess, she’d say that was the moment when Kim won the case. Jesse was a mess. He could hardly breathe he was crying too hard—like Richard Rodríguez said he’d been doing in the car the night they arrested him. Every single member of the jury looked like someone was drowning a bag of kittens in front of them. A whole bag, not just one. If Marie didn’t think the kid was being serious, if she didn’t know how badly he’d been trying to help Hank, she might have hated him for having so much power over people. A couple of tears and everyone wanted to take him home and feed him chicken noodle soup. Even the prosecution lawyer looked like he suddenly hated himself for making Jesse Pinkman cry.

Marie was the last witness called to the stand. She felt that was fitting. Sure, they were all here because of Jesse Pinkman, but she was the deciding factor. He was part of the reason Hank died, so she should get some say in what happened to Jesse from here on out. Maybe the Sharps got a say as well, because of their son, but no one else. Not even Skyler. She’d wanted her husband dead by the end, Marie hadn’t.

She swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and took her seat and let the questions flow over her. She answered them exactly like she’d rehearsed in her head, not giving too much or too little, just enough to be impartial so that the jury would think she was a good witness before she really started going into detail. And then Kim was cross-examining her and finally asked the question Marie had been waiting for the whole trial;

“Was Jesse Pinkman trying to help the DEA?”

Marie leaned forward in her chair. “Jesse came to my house with my husband, and he did everything he could to help bring Walter White to justice. He spent six months as a slave to crazy monsters—the same monsters who killed my husband—because he tried to do the right thing.”

There, she thought savagely. There, take that Walter. Fuck you. I’m not going to let you drag this kid down with you. 

The jury was done deliberating in under thirty minutes. One count of fourth-degree involuntary manslaughter. Marie looked up the degrees before the trial began, when she found out what they actually intended to charge Jesse Pinkman with. Fourth degree wasn’t bad. It meant months in a jail cell, not years. It meant he would have a life again, while he was still young enough to live it. 

It was clear by the looks of pain the jurors were shooting at Jesse that they hadn’t really wanted to convict him of that much, but he’d said on the confession tape and then again when he was on the stand that he’d killed a man. On Walter White’s orders, but he still did it. They couldn’t hand wave that away.

“The jury recommends that the defendant be sentenced to eighteen months in Golden Hills Psychiatric facility,” the head juror said. Marie wondered briefly if she would have made that sentence sound better, where she the one to announce it. The head juror just made it sound sad, like an afterthought or an attempted apology for convicting Jesse of anything at all. Marie would have made it sound like a good thing—because it was. A psychiatric facility would be able to help Jesse deal with all the terrible things he’d been through. It was the best thing for him, really.

Kim whispered something to Jesse and gave his arm a light squeeze of assurance. Jesse just continued to look like he wanted to die and was about to cry. Kim helped herd him up from his seat as reporters snapped pictures with their cameras that made him flinch and noise filled the courtroom. The reporters had been doing a surprisingly good job staying out of the way, remaining unobtrusive during the trial itself, but now that the ruling was made, all they wanted to do was get at Jesse and ask him questions.

Well, they would have to wait. Marie pushed her way out of her seat and past Skyler to plant herself right in the center of the walkway leading out of the room, Kim and Jesse would have to walk past her if they wanted to get out. Kim had one hand out in front of Jesse, the other on the small of his back to guide him. The hand she had outstretched had her briefcase dangling from it in a white-knuckled grip and Marie thought it looked kind of like a shield.

“Jesse,” Marie said, tilting her chin up. Kim stopped walking at once, the grip on her shield briefcase growing tighter. Jesse looked up firm the floor for the first time in hours. His eye found hers. They were very blue. She’d forgotten how blue they were because he spent so much time looking down now.

“Mrs. Schrader,” he chocked. Polite. Frightened.

Marie pushed her way past Kim and flung her arms around Jesse. She saw Officer Rodriguez out of the corner of her eye making his way over quickly, but she ignored him. Instead, she pulled Jesse in close and rubbed her hand up and down his back in as comforting a gesture as she could manage. She could feel the knobs of his spine. 

“It’s over now,” she whispered into his hear. “It’s finally over.”

There was a heartbeat where Jesse didn’t seem to know what to do, and then he was holding on to her with all the strength he possessed. She could feel that he was crying again but it didn’t matter so much now. He’d go to Golden Hills and they would help him need to cry so much anymore. Hell, she went to therapy—it was the only way she knew how to cope with everything that had happened—it was good for a person. It would be good for Jesse.  
~~~~  
She visited him daily. It became a sort of routine; get up in the morning, go shower, drink some coffee, and decide whether or not today was another day she would drive out to Golden Hills. Most days it was another day she chose to drive out. What did she have to lose? What did she have to occupy their time aside from the long drives to and from the facility? She didn't have a job, probably wouldn't need one with the life insurance payout from Hank’s death, and Skyler didn’t want to see her any more often than Marie wanted to see Skyler, so she was at an impasse. She could sit at home and think about all the bad things that happened in her life recently, or she could drive out to Golden Hills with a little gift basket full of candy and visit Jesse. 

There were always reporters lurking around the gates for Golden Hill and Marie made a point to slow down and glare at each of them in turn. They were terrible people for trying to bother Jesse and they should know that she knew how terrible they were. Aside from family, Jesse wasn’t supposed to get visitors. But his parents never came to see him. For the first month he was at Golden Hill, no one at all came to check in on him.

She shouldn't have been allowed in to see Jesse either, not really, but no one was going to tell the wife if a dead DEA agent hero that she couldn't bring candy to a young man in need of some support. That’s what Officer Rodriguez said, the first time he confronted her about visiting Jesse. 

Richard--she liked to call him Richard in her head, it was more intimate that way, more like they were friends--came to her house. He knocked politely on her door and waited politely for her to answer, shifting with guilt from foot to foot before he worked up the courage to blurt out his reason for being at her home.

“You went to visit Jesse Pinkman,” he said in a rush.

“Marie nodded and let one eyebrow rase. She knew she wasn't supposed to visit Jesse and she knew that she shouldn't have signed her real name on the visitor’s log if she didn't want anyone to know what she’d done, but she had wanted someone to know. She was making a point here. It was all about rehabilitation. Maybe she’d start an organization to help with that, to visit prisoners and mental patients that didn’t have anyone else who would visit them. She bet that would make a real difference. She’d be really good at that, because she was an excellent listener.

“Ma’am, you’re not really supposed to be visiting him if you aren’t family. It’s the rules of the facility,” he said with a wince. His eyes squinted against the sunlight. 

Marie shrugged. “We’re kind of family,” she said. “Jesse and me and my sister and her kids. We’re all kind of related now, after all this stuff with that terrible man is done and over with.”

Richard looked down. He was in his full uniform. She wondered again how old he actually was. She and Hank had been right out of high school when they first met each other.

“That’s not really the kind of family relationships the rules are talking about,” he said to his feet. “I gotta ask you, ma’am, and I mean no disrespect, what are you doing when you go visit him? Are you going there because of what happened to your husband?”

Marie considered the question. She hadn’t let Richard into the house and now she was kind of glad she hadn’t because it let her lean casually up against the frame of her front door to cross her arms over her chest. She was good at projecting disappointment. “Yes, I’m going because of what happened to Hank.”

Richard gave a deep sigh through his teeth. He reached up and brushed this thick hair back from his forehead. “Ma’am, you can’t do that. It’s going to interfere with his rehabilitation pr--”

“I’m going there because he was the last person to see my husband alive, and because Hank would have wanted me to.” Not true. Hank wouldn't have cared past getting Walter incarcerated, but Richard didn’t need to know that. Besides, the Hank in her head was the kind of man who would want to visit Jesse. He’d be proud of Jesse’s decision to do the right thing.

“No one else is visiting that poor young man, and I’m not going to let him think he’s in this all alone. Because he’s not. Like I said, we're kind of a family now. We understand each other because we all went through it, in one way or another, because of Walt.”

Richard still didn’t look convinced. He glanced back out towards the street, searching, before finally turning back to look at her. “Then we can get you an official pass to go see him, if Jesse wants that too.”

Marie smiled, satisfied, and flicked her hair back over her shoulder. “He does.”


End file.
